Trevor Howe
Trevor Howe was Sharona Fleming's ex-husband, the father of her son, Benjy. True to Sharona's lousy luck with men, he had recurring problems with alcohol and gambling (to wit, the inability to give either up) and with fidelity and employment (the inability to keep them). Sharona divorced Trevor when Benjy was still very young and Benjy hardly remembered his father. After their divorce, he also missed several alimony payments. In 2003, he showed up at Sharona's house for Benjy's birthday, seemingly a "different man," having given up drinking and gotten a regular job and wanting Sharona and Benjy back in his life. Benjy was so happy having a father, Sharona was tempted to quit as Adrian Monk's assistant and move back to New Jersey with Trevor. Just as they were about to leave, however, she discovered that he had booked them tickets to Detroit, where his wealthy Uncle Jack lived; Uncle Jack cut him off after he and Sharona divorced, and Trevor's primary (if not sole) motive was to "get back into his pocket." Sharona sent Trevor packing, and stayed in San Francisco with Benjy. Later, however, Sharona asked Trevor to take care of Benjy, when she was afraid she was losing her sanity. Sharona and Trevor later reconciled, remarried, and she and Benjy moved back to New Jersey. Novel History After Sharona rejected him, Trevor returned to New Jersey, and was wracked with guilt thinking about Benjy's likely reaction when he found out his father had been trying to use him to get back in his rich uncle's good books. Spurred on by this guilt, Trevor actually did everything he said he had done: stopped drinking, got a job, and, one day, mustered up the courage to call Benjy and apologize for what he'd done. Benjy and he began talking, and eventually he and Sharona began talking as well. He prevailed on her to give their marriage a second try. After a brief stay in New Jersey, Trevor moved his family to Los Angeles, to start his own landscaping business. He was framed for the murder of one of his clients, a professor at UCLA, by mystery author Ian Ludlow. The victim had supposedly surprised Trevor while he was going through her house in search of valuables. Sharona, believing that her husband had never really changed, left Los Angeles and returned to San Francisco, wanting her job with Monk back. However, Monk's new asisstant, Natalie Teeger, convinced Monk to look into the case. When he did, he quickly concluded that Trevor was innocent. Sharona, torn up with guilt, visited him in prison, where they reconciled again; Trevor assured her that he still loved her, and admitted he'd given her plenty of reason to doubt him in the past. Trevor was eventually exonerated when Monk exposed Ludlow. Several other persons framed by Ludlow proposed a lucrative false arrest lawsuit against the city and police, but Trevor declined, shying away from a quick buck in favor of keeping his family together and out of the headlines - a decision that renewed Sharona's faith in him. The family returned to Los Angeles. Background Information and Notes *Trevor was played by Frank John Hughes in "Mr. Monk and the Sleeping Suspect," and by David Lee Russek in "Mr. Monk and the Girl Who Cried Wolf." He did not appear again, but was used as a plot device to explain away Sharona's absence, after Bitty Schram's unexpected departure from the show. *In the novel, Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants, he was incorrectly named as "Trevor Fleming." Category:Frame-ups Category:Characters Category:Recurring Characters Category:Males Category:Fleming family Category:Howe family